P L D 1956 Federal Court 140 (PLP)

MUHAMMAD MUNIR, C. J,‑‑

The appellant, Musafar, was charged before the Sessions Judge of Peshawar with the murder of Fazal Rehman. The learned Judge, agreeing with the, unanimous opinion of the assessors, found him guilty and sentenced him to death, Ibis appeal was dismissed by tire learned Judicial Commissioner of the N. ‑W. F. P. and the sentence, of death confirmed, On a petition presented by the appellant, he was allowed to appeal to this Court on the ground whether the evidence in corroboration of the eye Witnesses who appeared to be accomplices was sufficient, Having now heard and examined the findings as to the circumstances relied on lay the prosecution we consider that this appeal ought to be dismissed. Fazal Rehman is alleged to have been murdered in the appellant's own balakhana in Peshawar era the night of the 28th February 1955. The account given by the eye‑witnesses is that on an insulting remark having been uttered try the deceased the appellant repeatedly struck him on tine neck and head with a small sword and killed him on the spot. The dead body was put into a gunny bag which was squeezed into a steel trunk, The appellant then procured a car and placing the trunk on the back seat drove to a bridge where he threw it into a stream. There were four eye‑witnesses who recounted what happened in their presence in the balakhana They were Behram a servant of the appellant, Allah Bakhsh a flower seller and Madat Khan ,and Faqir Hussain who are butchers. They were all about to take their meals with the appellant when the deceased made a remark which provoked the appellant who took a small sword with which he struck the deceased and killed him. Each of these witnesses deposed how he happened to be present and in what circumstances the appellant killed the deceased. None of them, however, gave any information to the authorities or to the relatives of the deceased and two of them, namely, Behram and Madat, actually helped the appellant in the disposal of the body. The learned Judicial Commissioner sought to explain the conduct of these witnesses by accepting their explanation that they had been warned on pain of death not to disclose the incident to anyone and, thought that they were not accomplices, though he recorded the further finding that even if they were accomplices the evidence in corroboration was more than sufficient. When the petition for special leave was presented to this Court, it appeared to the learned Judges that the position of the four eye‑witnesses was that of accomplices or of witnesses who were no better than accomplices, and that the real question to be determined was whether the corroborative evidence which had been accepted by the Sessions Judge and the learned Judicial Commissioner connected ‑or tended to connect the appellant with the offence of murder. The circumstances subsequent to the murder as con currently found against the appellant are :‑ (1) that immediately after the murder he and Behram went out of the balakhana and borrowed a car on a false pretext ; (2) that while the appellant sat in the car which was parked near the opening of the street in which the balakhana is he sent Behram to bring, the trunk, and that shortly afterwards the trunk was brought by Behram and Madat which was put on the back seat of the car: (3) that on being questioned what he was doing at that time of the night the appellant gave a false explanation ; (4) that the body, of the deceased was retrieved from a stream in consequence of the information given by the appellant's servant Behram, and that inside this trunk was a receipt showing the payment of a bill by the appellant ; and (5) that traces of human blood of the same group as that of the deceased. were found on the sofa, and the coil matting in the balakhana in which the , murder is alleged to have been committed. We made it clear to counsel who argued the appeal that we found no reason to, go behind the findings of, fact recorded by the Sessions Judge and accepted by the learned Judicial Commissioner and that the sole question on which he was to address us was whether if the findings of the learned Judicial Commissioner regarding the circumstantial evidence were, accepted trey were or were not sufficient corroboration against the appellant on the charge of murder. The arguments at the Bar were therefore confined to the contention that the incriminating facts mentioned above merely showed that the appellant disposed of the body of the deceased and did not connect or tend to connect him with the offence of murder. If the law be, as we hold it is, that corroborative evidence need not itself be sufficient for conviction and that all that is needed is that it should connect or tend to connect the prisoner with the crime. A it is obvious that the evidence in this case clearly satisfies that requirement There is no doubt that Behram, who is the appellant's servant, was concerned in or knew of the crime because it was at his instance that the body was recovered six days later from a trunk which had been deposited at the bottom of a stream. Behram has given evidence that the murder was committed by the appellant in his own ‑balakhana and the fact that the scene of the murder was the place mentioned by Behram is proved by the existence of marks of human blood on the 'sofa and the coir matting which were in the balakhana and were taken into possession by the Investigating Officer. Then we have the fact that immediately after the murder the appellant made frantic efforts to obtain a car on a false representation, was at dead of night seen putting a trunk in that car which he directed to be driven to a stream in which the trunk was thrown under his instructions. The fact that the trunk was that of the appellant is proved by the receipt that was found inside it when it was taken into possession by the Investigating Officer after it had been emptied of the corpse at the mortuary. These circumstances, coupled with the fact that the appellant denies all his movements on the night in question and gives no explanation of them were, in our opinion, quite sufficient to maintain the conviction of murder because, to say the least, they definitely tended to connect the appellant with the murder and confirm that part of the testimony of the accomplices in which they had alleged that the murder was committed by the appellant. On this view of the case this appeal is without any force and is therefore dismissed. A.H. Appeal dismissed